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Teachers moved to cover classes on first day of school

Nick McFerron, The Jackson Sun 10:39 p.m. CDT July 31, 2014

New year also brings start of academic middle school program at Northeast Middle

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Parents and students attend an open house for the Academic Academy at Northeast Middle School on Monday. Today is the first day of school, which is a half day for students.
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A new school year starts today in Jackson-Madison County's public schools, and Superintendent Verna Ruffin said that every school will have a certified and effective staff member in each classroom.

While the school system is still working to fill about 25 positions, Ruffin is temporarily reassigning current staff, such as instructional coaches and guidance counselors, as well as using retirees to ensure that every classroom has a certified teacher.

Ruffin said that the district will move forward in developing a pool of highly effective and qualified teachers.

"We are committed to the academic excellence of each student in our district," Ruffin said in a news release. "It is our responsibility to ensure that every student has the opportunity every school day to achieve their academic best. We will accomplish that goal through the work of our excellent teaching staff and the leaders in our schools."

At an open house Monday at the new Academic Academy at Northeast Middle School, parents and students had the opportunity to meet their teachers and see the newly renovated classrooms. The academic middle school program for high-achieving students will operate as a school within a school at Northeast.

Teresa Tritt, Northeast's new principal, talked about goals for the Academic Academy and introduced parents and students to a team of teachers specifically chosen for the school.

"We've had to move very quickly," Tritt said. "From April until now we've had to put in a brand new staff. We have teachers who are returning from Northeast, but we also have several teachers coming from other schools in the district, other districts across Tennessee and even from other states."

Using new ways to teach the same subjects is among the unique characteristics that separates the new academy from other middle schools.

Sandy Parimore and Trista Havner are two of the teachers who came to Northeast this year.

Parimore was a middle school GEMS and English teacher, and Havner was a 12th grade history teacher. Now they teach Humanities in the same classroom at the same time.

Speaking almost in unison, Parimore and Havner described how the new Humanities class would teach social studies along a chronological timeline, while including literature and historical documents from the time period and bringing social studies and English literature into the same classroom.

"The idea of the Academic Academy was about different course options," Parimore said.

Havner continued Parimore's thought, "And what we could really do to link the social studies and English together, because they really fit together. It logically flowed that this would be a combined class, English and social studies."

As a former GEMS teacher working with gifted students, many of Parimore's former students are now at the academy.

"This is where my student population came, so I came with them," Parimore said.

One of those GEMS students, Dallas Jones, is entering the seventh grade.

"I thought there would be more opportunities and that it would be a better learning experience," Jones said. "I would be able to learn new subjects."

Jones' mom, Loquida Gleaton, talked about how positive the teachers are at the Academic Academy.

"I'm excited," she said. "The look of the school is completely different. We're going to all of his teachers, and everyone seems positive and energetic. They all seem to want this to work and want the kids to succeed, and that's always good."

Jones said he is most interested in the opportunity to start taking French.

His French teacher, Amanda Baker, just graduated from Murray State University in Kentucky and found out about Northeast through a job fair.

"I haven't seen any other middle schools offer foreign language, so I think that's awesome," Baker said. "I think every school should have that option. The younger you are, the easier it is to learn any language."

Baker is also excited about the prospect of every student having a computer.

"Our textbook is on the computer, and it has online exercises," Baker said. "There's all kinds of stuff, interactive games and things like that, that we'll be doing."

Northeast Middle School will be the flagship school in the Jackson-Madison County School System's rollout of its 1-1 technology plan.

Students at Northeast will have individual computers they pick up in their homeroom. They will carry them throughout the day, use them in class and then return them to their homeroom at the end of the day.

The school system technology department is still preparing the computers for school use, so the computers won't be ready for students until probably the middle of September.

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Northeast Middle School will be the first school in the Jackson-Madison County School System to implement a 1-1 technology plan, putting computers in the hands of every student.
(Photo:
NICK MCFERRON/The Jackson Sun
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Teachers at Northeast have been working together through the summer to prepare for using computers in the classroom every day. They will have an official training seminar Aug. 9.

"We have a school technology team that is still working through our procedures and working through how this is going to work in the classroom," Tritt said.

Renovations at Northeast were still in progress Monday night at the open house, but they were completed by Thursday night, according to Ginger Carver, spokeswoman for Jackson-Madison County Schools.